


Utenalysis

by RoyaltyOverReality



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: Analysis, Essays, Illustrations, Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22502611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoyaltyOverReality/pseuds/RoyaltyOverReality
Summary: A collection of essays analyzing the characters, relationships, symbolism, and themes in Revolutionary Girl Utena. Expect sporadic updates whenever inspiration hits me.
Kudos: 11





	1. Utena ISN'T Dumb

Every Revolutionary Girl Utena fan has heard jokes about how Utena is dumb. Most of us have made our fair share of them as well. However, However, even though she is an innocent character with a (sometimes frustratingly) optimistic attitude, she is not stupid. She’s an intelligent teenage girl being deceived by two very skilled manipulators who have exploited her desire to be part of a family. Anthy and Akio are actively discouraging her from asking questions about her situation, just like society actively discourages people from questioning unfair systems. To say that Utena is stupid oversimplifies an interesting character who is just as complicated as the rest of the cast.

In the Student Council Arc, Utena demonstrates that she is a clever person. At the beginning of the series, she asks perceptive questions that show she is looking for the right sort of information to help her figure out what is going on in the duels. In the second episode, she asks Anthy how she could be involved in the duels but still not know how they worked. This shows that she was suspicious about Anthy’s role in the duels, but she doesn’t get the answers she needs because Anthy deflects the question in two ways. First, she asks Utena why she wears a boys’ uniform, which Utena responds to by saying “because I like it." But then, after that, Anthy asks Utena if she’s bothered by having her and Chu Chu around, which leads her to introduce Chu Chu to Utena. This is not one, but three, different manipulation tactics. Anthy makes Utena come up with the answer to her own question, then she makes her feel guilty for asking it in the first place, and last she distracts her with a silly monkey.

However, even as Anthy discourages Utena from asking questions about the dueling games by giving her vague and confusing answers, Utena tries to use logic and reason with Anthy. From episode 3 up until episode 12, Utena tries to encourage Anthy to make more friends. This is a combination of her desire to give herself a sense of self-worth by “saving” Anthy and a projection of her own desire to be less lonely. To do this, Utena tries to be straightforward when talking with Anthy. In episode 3, she tries to explain to Anthy how her lack of friends is a problem instead of just dragging her along to the school dance. This is presumptuous of Utena because she is imposing her values onto Anthy. However, it does show how Utena is not completely oblivious. She is intelligent enough to understand that she needs to engage with Anthy's opinions.

Utena proves that she's smart in an academic sense, along with just an interpersonal sense in episode 4. In this episode, Wakaba tells Utena that she usually gets good grades in spite of doing poorly on her most recent test. This represents how even though Utena is a smart person, her intelligence will not help her succeed in the dueling games. Akio designed the dueling game so that it only benefits him. So, intelligent people like Utena and Miki, the duelist who is the focus of that episode, may believe that they can beat the system. However, Akio and Anthy are manipulating them both, and neither of them will be able to outsmart the system.

One of the biggest reasons that many fans think that Utena is dense or unintelligent is because she doesn’t pick up on the incestuous nature of Anthy and Akio's relationship. However, Utena has been bonding with Anthy since the beginning of the series. She has been bonding with Akio for almost as long because she started to view him as a mentor figure during the Black Rose arc. While it is impossible to deny that Utena genuinely views Anthy as her friend at the start of the Akio arc, many people forget that Utena also views Akio as her friend.

While the audience knows Akio is an evil person, Utena does not. She sees him as an intelligent older man who treats her as his equal, even though he is the Chairman of the school. While the audience knows that he is the Ends of the World, Anthy tells Utena that her brother knows nothing about the duels when Utena first meets him in episode 14. Utena starts lying on Anthy's behalf which incentivizes her to not connect Akio with the duels. If she did that, both her trust in Anthy and the illusion of her normal friendship with Akio would be broken.

Additionally, Utena does not find any reason to distrust Akio throughout the entire Black Rose Arc. While Akio is undeniably grooming her during this arc, he does not do or say anything to make Utena so uncomfortable that she will stop spending time with him. He is biding his time so that it will have the maximum negative emotional impact on her when he finally does take advantage of her. But to Utena Akio is smart, kind, and in a committed relationship. On the surface he seems like decent guy. He’s the Chairman of the school, but he’s young and cool, so she simultaneously sees him as both a friend and an authority figure. One could argue that she even sees him as a role model because he is simultaneously both someone who defies convention and lives up to the archetype of the prince. He has the power to be whoever he wants without being judged for it, which is something Utena wants as well. However, Utena wants this freedom so that she can define her own identity, while Akio uses this freedom to abuse other people.

Utena is drawn to both Akio and Anthy because Anthy lets her be a prince while Akio lets her be a “totally normal girl.” She can have both of her fantasies at once when she’s with the two of them by living in two separate worlds. The world of the duels lets her feel like a savior, especially after she protects Anthy from multiple people who were threatening to kill her in the Black Rose Arc. Even though Utena doesn’t remember the duels after this arc, she does still remembers protecting Anthy from the student council, none of whom respect Anthy’s autonomy. Utena never questions whether or not she respects Anthy's autonomy because she has been conditioned not to question her involvement in the duels. Anthy has encouraged Utena to try and fulfill the role of the Prince because that is part of her role as the Rose Bride. While Anthy gives her a chance to fulfill her dream of being a prince, Akio gives her the chance to feel like she is still a regular girl in spite of that. She gets the power that comes with being a prince and the societal validation that comes with being the princess.

By the time that Utena moves into the Chairman's office, she has good reason to purposefully avoid admitting that Akio and Anthy's relationship isn't as wholesome as she had originally believed. Early on in the Akio arc, Anthy apologizes to Utena on Akio's behalf, because she is worried that she was offended by him referring to the three of them as being family. However, Utena tells Anthy that it made her feel good because she doesn't have any family herself. As much as she genuinely values Anthy’s autonomy, she does want to uphold the system of her being the Rose Bride. While she wants to improve the system so that Anthy has more freedom, she does enjoy how the system gives her a sense of belonging she never had before. Later, she realizes that sense of belonging comes from her relationship with Anthy, and not her status as part of Anthy and Akio's family. However, by this point, she has yet to realize that because Akio is using the fact that she lost her family at a young age to manipulate her.

While the audience has known the truth about Akio and Anthy's relationship since episode 14, Utena didn't even start spending much time with both of them at once until she moved into the Chairman's tower. In addition to this, she does not have a framework for what a healthy family is supposed to look like since she grew up without one. Even if it doesn't seem like Anthy and Akio have a normal sibling relationship to her, Utena doesn't feel like she has the right to criticize them for that. They’re the first family she’s ever been part of and Utena seems to be uncomfortable with the general concept of empathy. She often shies away when Wakaba is extremely friendly with her, so one can assume that any sort of closeness feels unfamiliar to her. Also, the fact that she still believes she is helping Anthy keep the duels secret from Akio probably makes her feel like an invader in their family.

When Nanami moves into the Chairman's tower, Utena using her as a sounding board to validate her opinions about the true nature of Anthy and Akio's relationship. If Nanami agrees that they are a regular pair of siblings, then it must be true. However, if Nanami disagrees with her, Utena can blame Nanami for looking for evidence that Anthy feels the same way about Akio that she does about Touga. In episode 32, Utena tells Nanami that she thinks Akio and Anthy are sleeping in the same bed because they are "really close siblings." She already knows that Nanami thinks there is something incestuous about the relationship between the two siblings based on the conversations they had in the previous episode. So, if Nanami validates her theory now, then everything is all right. She doesn't have to reevaluate the way she's been living her life up until this point. She can have a family.

In the end, all that Utena wants is to overcome the pain of losing her family at such a young age. In episode 37, Anthy tells Utena that she wants herself, Utena, and Akio to stay the way that they currently are forever. But that's not Anthy's fantasy, it's Utena's. Utena is tired of feeling alone. She’s tired of feeling like she isn’t strong enough. She doesn’t want to have to rely on some man like a delicate princess, but she doesn’t really want to be a prince either. She wants to know that she can be free from those roles without being completely alone. And eventually, she does find that in Anthy. Even though their relationship was never perfect, they learn to see each other as people. They find freedom and companionship in each other, and that’s what makes their relationship beautiful.


	2. On Being Human In Revolutionary Girl Utena

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I posted this short essay on my Tumblr a while ago, and I thought I would post it here as well. Most of the other essays in this collection will probably be longer than this one. I posted this essay here in spite of that because I created this "story" to keep all of my RGU essays together in an easily accessible place.

One thing that often gets overlooked about Utena is how human the characters really are. Even characters that don’t come off as particularly sympathetic are shown to have hobbies, quirks, and social lives. Seeing Shiori and Kozue hang out with their friends, or seeing Saionji make eggs in the middle of the woods, or finding out that Touga seems to genuinely love cats doesn’t have much bearing on the plot as a whole. However, it does show that these characters are just normal teenagers.

This makes it easier for the audience to recognize when a character is a villain who poses a genuine threat to Utena and Anthy’s safety. The two characters who don’t receive this sort of characterization are Mikage and Akio. It’s interesting that these two are also the only adult characters who play an important role in the series. For Mikage, the fact that he seems to have great difficulty forming genuine emotional connections to anything or anyone is a key part of his character. One of the key points in episode 22 is how Mikage’s inability to allow himself to simply “be human” made him into the shadow of himself that he is in the series.

So, really the only character where their ability to engage in mundane social interactions and activities goes completely unexplored is Akio. This isn’t to say that Akio doesn’t have hobbies. In fact, it’s made blatantly clear that he has a lot of them. There’s no denying he has a thing for his car, and one of the first things we learn about him is how much time he spends stargazing. However, he never seems to do any of these things just for the sake of doing them. His car rides always serve to manipulate someone into doing what he wants and, by the end of the series, it’s pretty clear that the reason he’s spending so much time in the planetarium doesn’t have anything at all to do with astronomy. When the viewers see every other character doing things just for the fun of it, while everything Akio does has an ulterior motive to it, it makes us uncomfortable because he seems less human than the rest of the characters.

This also serves to humanize Anthy and make her more sympathetic to the audience. Anthy is different from the rest of the characters because it’s unclear whether she engages in the majority of her hobbies because she finds them enjoyable or because she gets something out of it. Some things, like playing the piano, she clearly does to manipulate the duelists. Others, like playing cards with Chu Chu, are things that don’t seem to give her any benefit other than simply being fun. However, there are some things that fall into more of a gray area between the two categories. Does she enjoy watching infomercials and knitting, or was that all just part of a long game plan to turn Nanami into a cow?

TThe best example of one Anthy’s hobbies that might just be a manipulation strategy is her love of growing roses. While it would be easy to write this hobby off as a clear example of something that she does as part of her duties as the Rose Bride, she does seem to get a decent amount of genuine enjoyment out of gardening. In general, Anthy seems to truly be at her happiest when taking care of nonhuman living things. The show takes advantage of this ambiguity in episode 37 when she says “as long as I can raise roses, I’ll be happy” during her conversation about poisoned tea and cookies with Utena. The show uses the ambiguity it has already established about how “human” Anthy is through the way that she engages in mundane social interactions and activities to make the viewers question how truthful Anthy is really being. The show never provides a clear answer to whether Anthy genuinely loves gardening or not, just like it never provides an answer as to whether she is a good or a bad person. When it comes to Anthy, it’s a safe bet to assume the answer to any either/or question about her is "yes."

In the end, it really says a lot about Revolutionary Girl Utena that even small details like hobbies and mundane social interactions can play such an important role in the story. Whether those things serve to normalize a character, highlight their villainy, or raise questions about whether or not they can be trusted, the fact that insignificant throwaway details that would probably be meaningless on any other show can hold so much narrative significance proves why this series has so many obsessive fans analyzing every single detail.


	3. How Bad Can The Heteropatriarchal Capitalist System Possibly Be?  A Comparative Analysis of Akio Ohtori and the Onceler

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a half-joking essay that I posted a while ago because I missed writing essays after I graduated from university.

In the 1997 shoujo anime series Revolutionary Girl Utena, the primary antagonist Akio Ohtori compares himself to Lucifer, “the star that was originally an angel, but chose to become the Devil” (Their Eternal Apocalypse).” He is far from the only antagonist in animated media to have a character arc that mirrors Lucifer’s fall from grace. However, one of the most widely known pieces of animated media that places the narrative device of the Lucifer allegory in the context of systematic oppression is the 2012 film adaptation of Dr. Suess’s  _ The Lorax  _ from Blue Sky Studios. Both Akio Ohtori and the Onceler start with noble intentions, undergo a transformation that results in their fall from grace, share similarities in their character design, and eventually realize that all of their successes were hollow acts of self-destruction. 

Despite being the principal antagonists of their respective works, both Akio Ohtori and the Onceler started off as idealistic young men who wanted to improve the world that they lived in. Akio did this in the form of Prince Dios, who tried as hard as he could to protect the young girls of the world, even to the detriment of his own health and wellbeing (“The Rose Signet”). In a similar vein, the Onceler wanted to improve people’s lives by selling an amazing, multi-purpose invention called the Thneed. While both of these characters have altruistic motivations, both saving young girls and inventing a miracle product are both good deeds that rely on the helplessness of others. So, for both Prince Dios and the Onceler to base their entire identities on helping others, they are perpetually placing themselves in a position of power over the people they help. At this point in the narrative, neither character is fully conscious of the position of power that he is placing himself in. 

However, by the time that both characters experience their transformative fall from grace it is far too late for them to change their position in the system. In Utena, the audience sees how Prince Dios either has to let his younger sister, Anthy, face a sword-wielding angry mob in his place or to face it himself. Presented with the choice to “fall from grace or die,” Dios becomes Akio by giving into selfish and “impure” desires instead of continuing to risk his own life for the good of others (Spadaro). In contrast with Akio’s allegorical transformation into a villain, the Onceler becomes a villain by singing a song called “How Bad Can I Be?” about how his outlook on life has changed from the beginning of the film:

_ The animal that is has got to scratch and bite and claw and bite and punch _

_ And the animal that doesn't (well the animal that doesn't) winds up _

_ Someone else's lu-lu-lu-lu-unch! _ _ (The Lorax) _

By this point in the story, the Onceler no longer cares about improving people’s lives. Instead, he only cares about making money so that he can have power over others. The Onceler made such a radical change to his worldview because he wanted to live up to his family’s high expectations for him. While in the Onceler’s name does not change in the film itself, the online fandom devoted to the Onceler on the social media platform tumblr referred to this version of the character’s “post transformation self as The Greedler.” (Z) Despite the obvious differences in which Akio and the Greedler’s transformations were presented narratively, the audiences for both works seemed to garner the same message. Both of these characters abandoned their values to such an extent that they could be considered completely different people after succumbing to external pressures from society at large. 

This transformation is also illustrated by how the design of both characters changes after their morality does. Both the Onceler and Prince Dios wear lightly colored outfits, which is often associated with innocence and purity. Both characters also have a “noble steed,” which is one of the trademarks of an archetypical hero. Prince Dios has a white horse, which adds to his Fairytale prince mystique, while the Onceler has a mule, representing his humble beginnings and his status as an outcast, even within his own family. After they undergo their transformation, Akio and the Greedler both receive brighter colored outfits. Akio’s new outfit is predominantly red, a color associated with passion, while the Greedler’s new outfit is predominantly green, a color associated with money. These colors are significant because Akio’s power is derived from his ability to use his sexuality as a weapon of both intimidation and manipulation, while the Greedler’s power is derived from his financial empire. Both of them abandon their white clothes, which represent purity, in favor of brightly colored clothes that represent the source of their power within the system of oppression that they have created. 

However, in spite of being the arbiters of institutions of their own design, neither of these characters feels truly fulfilled by the power that they wield. While each of them clearly enjoy absolutely shredding on the electric guitar and doing shirtless flips onto the hood of a moving convertible, respectively, neither one of them has achieved true self-actualization. This is because they both designed a system where living is synonymous with competing. So, in order to maintain their place at the top of their system, they had to cut off any genuinely selfless connections to other people that they once had. After the Onceler’s business goes bankrupt because he cuts down the last of the truffula trees that he requires to make his thneeds, he is left all alone in the massive tower that he built as a monument to his own greatness. The same happens to Akio after Anthy leaves him behind in search of both Utena and, more importantly, freedom from Akio’s oppressive system. 

Both Akio Ohtori and the Onceler are the subjects of similar narratives about how kindness can be corrupted into selfishness. Their moral corruption thoroughly transforms both characters into completely different people, both in an aesthetic and a narrative sense. However, neither character acts in total isolation from exterior societal pressure, even when they reach the top of the social hierarchy. However, each character presents the audience with a different message about what could happen to a person who subscribes to the same cynical philosophy that they do. 

The Onceler shows that while it is impossible for someone to undo the negative consequences of their actions, it’s never too late to change for the better. As an old man, he helps a young boy replant the trees so the air in Thneedville can become breathable again. Contrarily, Akio’s story serves a cautionary tale, showing the audience that there will always be people like Utena and Anthy, willing to fight for love and compassion, regardless of how much the world that they’re living in discourages it. Analyzing both of these messages side by side presents self-serving people who go out of their way to exploit others with two options: They can either change their ways or watch the world change around them.

  
  


**Works Cited:**

_ Lorax, The.  _ Directed by Chris Renaud and Kyle Balda, performances by Zac Efron, Taylor Swift, Danny DeVito, Ed Helms, 2012.

Spadaro, Giovanna. “Identity.” _ The Long Legged Older Man.  _ [ http://akio.ohtori.nu/05_identity_01.htm#archetypes ](http://akio.ohtori.nu/05_identity_01.htm#archetypes) Accessed 2 Sep. 2020.

“The Rose Signet.”  _ Revolutionary Girl Utena,  _ episode 34, TV Tokyo, 19 Nov. 1997.

“Their Eternal Apocalypse.”  _ Revolutionary Girl Utena,  _ episode 25, TV Tokyo, 17 Sep. 1997.

Z, Sarah.  _ Tumblr’s Strangest Obsession: A History of the Onceler Fandom.  _ Youtube, 29 May 2020. Accessed 2 Sep. 2020.


	4. Nanami Deserved Better

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A piece of fanart that I made had me thinking hard about Nanami's final appearance in episode 39, which inspired me to write this essay about why Nanami deserved a happier ending.

At the end of Revolutionary Girl Utena, we see a brief sequence showing what has become of the other members of the student council. Both Miki and Juri have reconciled with Kozue and Shiori, laying frameworks for the beginnings of healthy relationships. In contrast, Touga, Saionji, and Nanami’s story lines have been reset, with them reverting back to the same places that they were in at the start of the series. All of these endings align well with what the characters deserve after their actions in the series, with one notable exception. Nanami Kiryuu deserved a better ending than the one that she received both because of the character development that she underwent and the way her relationship with Utena changed over the course of the series. The concept of a character “deserving” better is a very subjective one, most viewers like to see characters who change for the better get some sort of reward for that positive growth at the end of the story. However, regardless of whether or not one agrees with this, there is plenty of evidence showing that by the end of the series, the role that Nanami plays in both the narrative series and Utena’s life is more similar to that of Utena’s friends, Miki and Juri, than that of her enemies, Touga and Saionji.

Miki and Juri’s character arcs both focus on broken relationships and reconciliation. Miki’s first duel shows his desire to restore the romanticized version of his childhood with Kozue that he remembers. Similarly, Juri’s first duel shows how she wants to use the power to revolutionize the world to “disprove miracles” by freeing herself from her unrequited feelings for Shiori. These duels present the themes of the desire to return to the past and the desire to overcome one’s own feelings as two separate theses. These theses are then inverted by Kozue and Shiori’s duels in the Black Rose saga, where viewers learn that both Kozue and Shiori only do things to hurt Miki and Juri because they envy them and they want their attention. These duels serve as the antithesis to the theses provided earlier on in the show by showing that, while Miki and Juri’s struggles may be relatable, putting other people on a pedestal in the same way that they do has negative consequences. In the Akio arc, both the conflict between the Kaoru siblings and the conflict between Juri and Shiori reach their most climatic point in the synthesis of the previous duels. The end of both episodes show the black rose duelist walking past the student council duelist and looking at them with a contemplative expression on their face, implying the pair has reached a crossroads in their relationship that could either lead to its reformation or the dissolution.

Touga and Saionji’s plotlines are both structured differently than this. Instead of following this hegelian structure, their story arcs are more repetitive because unlike Miki and Juri’s story arcs, which present a conflict between two parties, Touga and Saionji’s story arcs present patterns that have the potential to be broken. One significant factor about the difference between Touga and Saionji’s narratives and Miki and Juri’s narratives is that Touga and Saionji’s duels teach us more about Utena and her feelings for Anthy than we do about Touga and Saionji. Even though Saionji is the first character Utena duels, we don’t learn why he’s dueling until episode 9, The Castle That Holds Eternity. Both Utena and the viewers first learn who Touga is from his interactions with Utena and the rest of the characters long before his first duel. In the black rose arc, both Touga and Saionji’s black rose duelists are girls who have primarily admired them from afar up until the events of their duel. Both Wakaba and Keiko’s duels are focused on both girls using others to feel special, instead of the intricacies of Touga and Saionji’s personalities. Both Touga and Saionji are absent for large chunks of this arc, but while they are present we catch glimpses into the fact that they are both more complex than the versions of them that we saw in the first arc. Saionji’s anger and violence temporarily disappear, suggesting they’re just tools that he uses to prove that he is masculine and strong. Touga slips into a deep depression for the entirety of the arc after being defeated by Utena, showing that he would rather not be perceived at all than be perceived as vulnerable or flawed. However, in the third and fourth arcs, Saionji and Touga do not build on their character arcs in the same way that Miki and Juri do. Instead, they both show that the knowledge they have of who The Ends of the World really is leads them to have second thoughts about participating in the dueling game, but they both ultimately revert back to the same toxic patterns of behavior that we saw at the beginning of the first episode. Once defeated, Saionji softens and Touga loses interest in the duels, reverting to slightly more self actualized versions of their isolated selves from the Black Rose Arc. 

Even though in the end of the series Nanami receives the same ending as Touga and Saionji, her character arc is the same structure as Juri and Miki’s arcs. Nanami’s character arc is primarily concerned with her relationship to another character, Touga. While she does play a significant role in multiple episodes before her duel, the viewers don’t learn her primary character motivations until she duels for the first time she duels Utena. Her black rose duelist, Tsuwabuki, is someone that she has a preexisting relationship with. Even though it doesn’t directly further her relationship with Touga, it does explore the relationship dynamic between her and Tsuwabuki, which itself is modeled off her relationship with Touga. Additionally, the scene where Tsuwauki attempts to kiss her in the movie theatre is somewhat similar to the scene where Touga tries to kiss her in Akio’s car before her second duel. This duel is motivated by her desire to “surpass” Touga and break down the over-idealized version of him that she had built up in her head. After the duel, we do not see the two together again until the end of the series. After each duel, Nanami grows further away from the juvenile, possessive person that she was at the beginning of the series. 

Another way that Nanami’s narrative role resembles Miki and Juri’s more than Touga and Saionji’s is that, despite the fact that she starts off as an antagonist, she is an ally to Utena by the end of the series. In the beginning of the series she is jealous of the attention that Touga gives Utena and Anthy, which causes her to antagonize them both. However, when she moves into the Chairman’s tower before her second duel, her perspective on Touga is shattered and her views on Utena shift as a result of that. This is evident because in the episode One to Revolutionize the World, she is included in the badminton scene with Juri and Miki even though she isn’t playing the game with them. Many fans even cite the way that she gets flustered talking to Utena in this scene as evidence that she may be starting to develop feelings for her. Conversely, Touga and Saionji are seen primarily with each other or Akio before the final episode of the series after Touga’s final duel.

By the end of the series, it is clear which of the student council members are on which side of the conflict in the series. Miki, Juri, and Nanami all support Utena, while Touga and Saionji have sided with Akio. This aligns with which members of the student council used their duels against Utena as an opportunity to grow and change and which ones used reverted back to their old ways, even when presented with the opportunity to change. These narrative parallels between Nanami, Miki, and Juri justify Nanami receiving a happier ending than she did in the series. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, making tea, while Touga and Saionji practice kendo, it would have been much more rewarding to succeed on her own independently. While a chance to start from scratch and become better people is exactly what Touga and Saionji needed at the end of the series, Nanami had already put in all of that work. So, it’s disappointing to see her reduced to the role of Touga’s little sister once again. Maybe we could have seen her putting her leadership skills to use for the student council, helping Miki train Tsuwabuki or planning a big school dance. She could have been taking care of a pet kitten, showing she had changed from the jealous little girl who had drowned Touga’s pet in the river. Even a joke about her and her followers wearing matching cowbells would have been more rewarding then the ending we got to see because it would have shown she was developing her own life outside of her relationship to Touga. 


End file.
